Many electronic devices, such as media players and cellular telephones, often include a display on which visual content can be presented to a user. For example, such visual content can include graphics, images, videos, text, glyphs, and the like for providing information. Depending on the functional state of the device, the visual content may be provided in different ways and may be of different types. For example, when the device is first powered on and is booting up, or when the device is being rebooted, the visual content presented on the display may be “boot up” content that may be provided by a boot loader of the device. Then, once an operating system of the device has been loaded by the boot loader, the visual content presented on the display may be “application content” provided by an application program of the operating system.
The electronic device may present the visual content on the display in various orientations relative to an enclosure of the electronic device so that the content may be appropriately oriented relative to the user regardless of the various orientations in which the device enclosure may be positioned relative to the user. In some cases, the orientation of the displayed application content relative to the device enclosure may be changed by the user (e.g., by providing the device with a user input command) or by data output from a device sensor (e.g., an accelerometer or compass). Some application programs may store information indicative of a particular orientation of displayed application content such that, after rebooting of the device, the application program may once again present application content in the particular orientation indicated by the stored orientation information. However, during the rebooting process, the boot loader may not have access to the stored orientation information and may present boot up content in a default orientation that may be different from the particular orientation indicated by the stored orientation information. Such a difference in the orientation of the visual content presented by the device may be confusing or distracting to a user.